IIJS Postdoctoral Lecture with Benjamin Berman-Gladstone

The historiography of Israeli immigration has largely centered Ashkenazi subjects, with Middle Eastern Jews treated as passive objects of state policies. This lecture, by presenting as a case study the leadership of 'Adeni Jewry from 1947-1949, will call for a new way of understanding Israeli immigration history, and thus of understanding Israel itself. By reading against the grain of the archive, historians can locate suppressed voices and piece together the stories of the people who, though essential drivers of these events, have so far been excluded from the narrative.

Benjamin Berman-Gladstone (B.A. Brown University; Ph.D. New York University) is the Warren and Susan Stern Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Thought at Columbia University. He was previously a Fulbright Research Fellow in Israel and a Wexner Graduate Fellow. He specializes in Middle Eastern Zionist thought, Middle Eastern Jewish migration history, and Adeni history. His dissertation, completed in 2024, focused on colonialism and resistance in the Aden protectorates, Adeni Jewish political activism and migration from Aden and Yemen to Israel, and enslavement and the slave trade in the Eastern Aden Protectorate (in its Red Sea and Indian Ocean contexts) in the 1930s and 1940s.

This event was made possible by the generosity of Warren and Susan Stern and the Kaye family.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Host or Publisher The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University